The number of people receiving sickness benefits in the UK has remained steady and stubbornly high despite fluctuations in unemployment and decades of government interventions. While the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants has risen and fallen significantly in recent years in response to demand in the labour market, the number of claimants of employment support allowance (ESA) and incapacity benefit (IB) has remained remarkably stable. Over the last two decades, levels of ESA/IB claimants have not fallen below 2.2 million and not risen much above 2.6 million.

Successive government policy (from the New Deal for Disabled People, the reform of incapacity benefit, Pathways to Work, the work capability assessment and the Work Programme) has focused on one aspect of this problem – helping people move off sickness benefits and back into work (off-flow). However, these have generally had poor results with those on sickness benefits, compared to those on jobseeker’s allowance. Over the last two decades, those who have left sickness benefits have been replaced by a steady flow of people moving from work onto IB/ESA (on-flow) which has meant that the numbers of people claiming long-term sickness benefits has remained consistently high.

Not enough is being done to prevent people from leaving work and moving onto sickness benefits in the first place. After 20 weeks of sickness absence, the vast majority of individuals eventually fall onto benefits. An estimated 460,000 people each year transition from work to sickness and disability benefits. This is despite the huge cost to both government and to employers of long-term sickness. Employers pay £9 billion a year for sick pay and associated costs and the state spends £14.5 billion annually on ESA alone.

This problem can no longer be neglected by both business and the government. If the government wants to reduce welfare spending, deliver on its promise to halve the disability employment gap and build an economy that works for all, it will need to reduce the flow of people onto ESA.

KEY FINDINGS

The rise in people claiming sickness benefits because of a mental health condition is a key factor in the growth of the sickness benefit bill; such cases account for an increasing proportion of on-flow onto sickness benefits. In the year from August 1999, 31 per cent of new IB claims were due to mental health conditions. Over the same period 15 years later, this had risen to 44 per cent of new ESA claims. In May 2000, 31 per cent of all IB claimants had a mental health condition, but by May 2016 this had risen to 49 per cent of those on ESA. Tackling the increase in claims for mental health conditions must therefore be a priority for policymakers.

International evidence suggests that changing the incentives and liabilities for employers can be a powerful driver of behaviour. In the Netherlands, the government increased employers’ responsibilities by lengthening the period of statutory sick pay for which they were liable. This helped incentivise employers to focus on prevention and rehabilitation, thereby reducing sickness absence rates.

Businesses in the UK are not doing enough to address this problem, and the greatest costs as a result are borne by the state. For this to change, there needs to be a major shift in incentives with greater obligations on employers to support employees to stay in work, and greater financial liabilities if they fail to do so.

The current system is failing to identify health and mental health conditions early enough, and it is not doing enough to prevent those with such conditions either from falling out of work, or moving onto sickness benefits. There are a number of problems with the sickness policy framework that need to be addressed:

• The ‘Fit Note’ from GPs provides too little information about the employee’s ability to work, and the necessary adaptations to the workplace that might aid a return to work.
• Statutory sick pay (SSP) fails to reflect today’s complex and long-term health conditions that may often exceed the 28-week limit for SSP, and employees who recover after a period of more than 28 weeks do not have a right to return to their old job.
• The government’s new ‘Fit for Work’ service, while good in principle, is limited in scope, struggles to engage with small to medium-sized employers who need it, and does not provide the full suite of services that employers need to help people back into work.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EMPLOYERS

Additional obligations should be placed on employers so that there is a greater incentive for them to work with their employees to help keep them healthy and stay in work. However, the best employers already do this, and much can be learnt from the approach they take.

Workplace culture and practices are critical to improving the identification and management of sickness. It is in an employer’s interest to guard against increased presenteeism and ensure that visible systems and mechanisms are in place to identify health problems as early as possible and ensure affected employees receive appropriate support.

Employers should encourage open dialogue in which the presence of different health conditions is not stigmatised, and ensure that employee health, wellbeing and sickness is monitored systematically to identify problems. Anti-stigma campaigns, health and wellbeing awareness training for line managers and leadership on health and wellbeing issues from senior management all have an important role to play. A growing number of employers are introducing ‘wellbeing days’, which can be taken at extremely short notice or on the day itself, unlike regular periods of leave which must be booked in advance. They are intended as a means of reducing sickness absence and presenteeism by preventing the accumulation of stress and fatigue.

In addition, employers should:

• include health and wellbeing in annual review processes and regular supervisions
• use sickness management software and systems to identify problems, particularly fluctuating conditions, as early as possible
• make greater use of flexible working practices, underpinned by a robust absence management system, and greater understanding of ‘reasonable adjustments’ within a mental health context.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GOVERNMENT

Government must introduce a major shift in incentives with greater obligations on employers to support employees to stay in work, and greater financial liabilities if they fail to do so. It must also ensure that the sickness policy framework, notably statutory sick pay, properly reflects the nature of today’s major health conditions. We recommend that the government introducec four major reforms.

1. Establish new employer duties to engage with employees on statutory sick pay and extend SSP from 28 to 52 weeks.
2. Introduce ‘Fit Pay’ (flexible sick pay) to better reflect the nature of modern health conditions and better support employees back into work.
3. Pilot an expanded ‘Fit for Work’ occupational health service to support SMEs in particular to support employees to stay in work.
4. Ensure employers meet responsibilities for paying SSP.

Office for Civil Society (OCS) Local – March 2017 FOR INFO Update

FOR INFORMATION ONLY – Please see below updates that you may find of interest, apologies for any cross-posting:

If you no longer wish to receive these updates, please let us know by replying to this email, we can then take you off the circulation list.

paul.schofield@culture.gov.uk

jennie.noble@culture.gov.uk

OCS are now using @culture.gov.uk email addresses – please update your contacts

More information below on:

Office for Civil Society (OCS) Updates:

• LIfe Chances Fund
• Tackling Dormant Assets – Independent Dormant Assets Commission report launched
• Early Years Social Action Fund and Savers Support Fund
• Enabling Social Action – resources for commissioners
• Social Action – collection
• Community Organisers Expansion
• Libraries Deliver
• Job club standards

Updates from other Government Departments:

• 20 – 24 March is Communities Week

Stakeholder Updates:

• Sport England – Opportunity Fund and Potentials Fund

Office for Civil Society (OCS) updates:

1. LIfe Chances Fund

The Life Chances Fund (LCF) seeks applications from local commissioners, service providers and intermediaries who seek to use Social Impact Bonds (SIB) to tackle complex social problems that affect children and young people.

The £80m Fund was launched in July 2016 with the objective of helping those people in society who face the most significant barriers to leading happy and productive lives. The fund contributes to outcome payments for Social Impact Bonds.

Expression of interest for funding from the Life Chances Fund for Early Years and Young People are due by 31 March 2017.

The themes of Healthy Lives and Older People’s Services will be open to applications in June 2017.

BLF will be running six free events in June focusing on Older People’s Services and Healthy Lives. In addition to information delivered by the Fund, there will be presentations from investors and commissioners who are either developing or delivering SIB proposals. This will be an excellent opportunity for finding out more about LCF and networking with other interested parties.

The event dates in the north are:

•              Leeds – Tuesday 6^th June 2017
•              Liverpool – Thursday 15^th June 2017

If you have any questions about LCF, you can visit the website for full details or view slides from a recent webinar here.  For further information about the application process, policy themes, workshops and other opportunities, please contact the Big Lottery Fund.

For further information on Outcomes Based Commissioning and Social Impact Bonds, please visit the website of the Government Outcomes Lab.

On 31 March, the Give Us A Chance Consortium (GUAC) is holding a webinar where Nina Zuendorf, a Policy Advisor at the DCMS Centre for Social Impact Bonds, will provide information about the Life Chances Fund.  Nina will explain the scheme and also what Social Impact Bonds are, how they work – and also how they are targeted at achieving outcomes.  You can register for the webinar here.

2. Tackling Dormant Assets – Independent Dormant Assets Commission report launched

£2 billion boost set to transform charity and voluntary sector funding. Experts find vast sums lying unclaimed in dormant assets such as stocks and shares.

The independent Dormant Assets Commission was tasked with considering whether the current dormant assets scheme, which only covers bank and building society accounts, could be expanded to include other types of assets.

The Commission’s report estimates there to be £1 – 2bn of additional funding potentially available for the benefit of good causes from the inclusion of additional types of asset in an expanded dormant assets scheme.

3. Early Years Social Action Fund and Savers Support Fund

In February, the Office for Civil Society launched two new innovative Social Action funds worth £2 million, with our partner Nesta.  Eligible projects, based in England, are invited to submit a short expression of interest (EOI) by midday, Wednesday 29 March.

• The £1 million Early Years Social Action Fund to support early years development for children under 5.  Nearly a third of children in England are behind in development by age five. The  Early Years Fund will support parents in helping their young children reach those important developmental milestones and get the best possible start in life.   For full eligibility details, and more information visit Nesta’s website including FAQs and webinar slides.

• The £1 million Savers Support Fund to improve the public’s money management skills. The Savers Support Social Action Fund will help young people and families who are just about managing take better charge of their finances and work towards becoming debt free. This will help people across the UK who have little in savings to help them cope with the unexpected financial shocks in life, those who owe money, and those who struggle to manage their finances.  For full eligibility details, and more information visit Nesta’s website including FAQs and webinar slides.

4. Enabling Social Action – resources for commissioners

Social action is about people coming together to help improve their lives and solve important problems in their communities. When the public sector works with communities – listening to citizens, growing their capacity to act, and working with them as equals – social action can become a powerful way of meeting people’s needs.

From November 2015 to August 2016 government collaborated with the New Economics Foundation to develop resources for commissioners and other public sector leaders to help them embed social action in commissioning.  DCMS have published resources for public sector commissioners to help deliver public services.  These publications provide resources, ideas and case studies on how to embed social action into existing services, develop new programmes and create the conditions for social action.

5. Social Action – collection

Now published together in one place – reports, articles, data and analysis on how government is empowering communities to take action on the issues that matter to them.

This is part of government’s wider work to grow social action. You can find out more by reading this summary on social action or by viewing our discussion paper ‘Social Action – Harnessing the Potential’.

6. Community Organisers Expansion

The Office of Civil Society, part of the Department of Culture Media and Sport, awarded Community Organisers Ltd. the £4.2m contract to grow the movement of Community Organisers from 6,500 to 10,000 by 2020. Community Organisers Ltd is the independent body that grew out of the original 2011 – 2015 Community Organisers Programme.

Community Organisers are local leaders bringing people together to take action on the things that matter to them. The expansion programme will increase the number of organisers across England and support the most effective Community Organisers recruited through the original programme to broaden and deepen their impact, train new Community Organisers, and facilitate peer-to-peer support. The ultimate aim is for residents to take action together in their own neighbourhoods for social change – focused on the issues that matter most to them.

7. Libraries Deliver

Libraries are for everyone! The Libraries Taskforce (a body set up and sponsored jointly by DCMS and the Local Government Association) published its first strategy document in December 2016.

Libraries Deliver: Ambition for Public Libraries in England 2016-2021 paints a thorough picture of the wide range of outcomes which modern public libraries deliver, plus sets out a plan for how our vision of a sustainable public library service will be achieved.

Examples are regularly featured in their blog: https://librariestaskforce.blog.gov.uk/

One of our key ‘asks’ is that decision makers think ‘Libraries First’ when considering how to deliver services to people – and we hope that you will take a look at the strategy and consider when libraries may be valuable partners for the activities you are involved in.

Updates from other Government Departments:

8. 20 – 24 March is Communities Week

The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) are marking over 6,000 uses of community rights, protecting over 4,000 buildings, green spaces and other much loved local assets with Communities Week.

Communities Week celebrates positive change led by communities across England.  The week will see new resources, funding announcements and more will be happening over the week, so stay tuned on Facebook, Twitter and the  mycommunity.org.uk website for everything Communities Week ’17!

Want to get involved in your community? See the My Community Rights website for details on how to go about it. Also follow #CommunitiesWeek17 on Twitter for more details.

Stakeholder Updates:

9. Sport England – Opportunity Fund and Potentials Fund

Sport England’s Opportunity Fund and Potentials Fund will support volunteering projects for groups where we have identified significant untapped potential; those from economically-disadvantaged communities and young people.

• The Opportunity Fund targets people, aged 20+, from economically-disadvantaged communities

• The Potentials Fund targets children and young people aged 10 to 20 (with a particular focus on 10-14 year-olds) who are interested in doing something to benefit their community, through social action.

• The deadline for Expressions of Interest to these two new funds is no later than 12 noon, 24 April 2017.

In this first stage of their volunteering strategy Sport England want to learn from exciting, new volunteering and social action opportunities that will change the lives of volunteers and their communities. If you already work with their target audience and have a great volunteering idea using sport and physical activity, then they want to hear from you.

10) Job Club standards (a small favour)

If your organisation has ever supported a community job club and has documentation around the standards of services to clients can you send it to Paul  (paul.schofield@culture.gov.uk). Thanks

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The Better Care Fund will provide financial support for councils and NHS organisations to jointly plan and work together to deliver local services.

Failing to set up Local Plans could expose almost two-thirds of English councils to new government measures encouraging housing delivery, a new report claims.

The report by planning and development consultancy Lichfields, entitled “Planned and Deliver”, found that only 36% of local authorities have completed Local Plans, while 43% have not yet published a draft.

According to Inside Housing:

If government interventions proposed in the recent Housing White Paper become policy, this lack of progress could see some councils have development targets set for them.

The government’s proposal is that if a council does not have a Local Plan in place by November, its targets for housing delivery will be set according to central estimates for household formation.

If it still does not have one in place by November 2018, the targets will be set by a new objectively assessed housing need methodology, which will also take into account local factors affecting delivery. According to Lichfields, 222 local authorities (56%) could fail these tests.

The report also found that the biggest gaps in plan coverage are mostly in areas of high housing demand – London, the South East, and surrounding Birmingham. In general, these are areas containing green belt land or other national designations.

The gap between Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates and rents has widened to the point where private rented housing is “out of reach” for under-35s.

Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) research which focused on areas with the biggest gap between the set rate and actual market rents.

LHA rates should allow applicants to claim enough benefit to pay the rent on a home in the cheapest 30% of the private rented sector.

CIH’s research found that in 46 areas, less than a quarter of private rented properties are affordable to young benefit claimants.

In 17 of these areas less than 10% of homes were accessible and in six, concentrated in London, less than 5% were affordable.

Under-35s can only claim the “shared room rate”, the lowest bracket of LHA which is supposed to be based on the rental cost of a room in a shared home.

LHA rates were only allowed to rise by Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation in 2013/14, 1% in 2014/15 and 2015/16, and will be frozen for a further four years from 2016/17.

This has seen the rates drift away from real market rents, especially in areas where rents have increased sharply from a low base. In some areas the gap between the LHA rate and the cheapest properties is now more than £30 a week.

The Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) will bring together universities and professional organisations to provide evidence to inform housing policy.

It will address a wide range of issues in housing policy, following six themes:

• Housing and the economy
• Understanding housing markets: demand and need, supply and delivery
• Housing aspirations, choices and outcomes
• Housing, poverty, health, education and employment
• Housing and neighbourhood design, sustainability and place-making
• Multi-level governance

With £6m of its £7.5m funding coming from the Economic and Social Research Council, CaCHE will be independent of government and will be led by the University of Glasgow.

Here is  a useful upate from our friends at service matters on the lay of the land – econmically which impact on housing:

From 6th April HAs wishing to dispose of stock will not have to ask the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) for consent on sales; but charitable landlords were previously exempt from needing Charity Commission consent on proposals because the Charities Act 2011 exempts organisations if they are already required to obtain consent from another body.

With the HCA regulations gone, the Charity Commission put out an alert reminding providers of their new obligation to adhere to the legal framework in the Charities Act 2011 and might have to get Charity Commission sign-off before making any sale. The rule will only hit organisations registered as charities with the commission, and charities will be able to self-certify in most cases.

Non-exempt charitable providers will need to comply with sections 117-121 of the Charities Act 2011 when they dispose of land, and with section 124 when granting mortgages over land. They can do this either via self-certification of compliance or by obtaining an order from the commission or the court.

According to an Inside Housing:

“The HCA list, around 600 English housing associations – a third of the sector – are charities registered with the commission, although many of these are small almshouses that would not often need to sell stock.

Stock transfer landlords Bolton at Home, Poplar Harca, Halton Housing Trust and Helena Partnerships are among the landlords registered with the Charity Commission.

David Holdsworth, chief operating officer at the Charity Commission, said: “This legal framework supports trustees in making responsible and well-informed decisions about charity property, and provides safeguards to deal with conflicts of interest and protect the interests of charity beneficiaries.

“Self-certification is not onerous and involves taking appropriate professional advice – these are, on the whole, basic steps that you would expect responsible charity trustees to be taking. We have clear guidance which the trustees of charities affected by these changes should consider further.” “

The regulator is particularly concerned about the risk of sales of tenanted stock to commercial providers, which may then increase the rent or change the terms.

In February last year, charity the Glasspool Trust hit national headlines after it sold an estate in east London to a property developer which then hiked rents for residents.

Out of sector disposals have been common among care providers, Ms MacGregor said. “There are commercial operators already in that market. However in the future there is a lot of talk about other types of providers disposing stock and I think some of that talk might come to fruition.”

The changes will also mean associations no longer need the regulator’s approval to sign up to structured financing deals, such as those where properties are sold to an investor and then leased back.

A number of equity investors, including some newcomers to the sector, are currently seeking deals like these with associations.

“What I would always say is, where there is complexity, keep in mind who this is in the best interests of – the lender or the borrower. What we want to see is good governance around these decisions,” said Ms MacGregor.

She added that a notifications regime will allow the regulator to engage reactively if it has specific concerns.